(JWR) ---- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com)
LAST WEEK IN ATLANTA, Vice President Al Gore dropped one of his
big-think speeches, this one praising the work of faith-based social
service outfits and calling for Washington to fund religious-oriented
charities that assist the needy. This was, in part, a response to the
values-first pitch of former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley, who’s
discomfiting Gore in the contest for the Democratic presidential
nomination. The speech was also an occasion for Gore to trumpet his
spiritual side.

“Without values of conscience, our political life
degenerates,” he said. The Vice President hailed the “hunger for
goodness” among Americans, declaring, “A politics of community can be
strengthened when we are not afraid to make connections between
spirituality and politics.”

Let’s hope Gore’s speech was not broadcast in South Africa: Millions of
HIV-infected poor people would’ve had good reason to choke if they’d
heard Gore express these noble sentiments. The spirit-filled Veep has
helped pharmaceutical companies deny South Africans easier access to
anti-AIDS drugs.

Two years ago, in South Africa—where as many as one-quarter of pregnant
mothers in some areas are HIV-positive—President Nelson Mandela signed
into a law a measure that would allow South African firms to manufacture
low-cost generic versions of the high-priced AIDS-busting drugs produced
and sold by major Western drug companies. Under international trade
rules, a country can engage in such “compulsory licensing” to combat a
national emergency.

With 22.5 million people living with AIDS in
sub-Sahara Africa, the emergency seems real enough. The law also would
permit the country to buy drugs when they are found to be cheaper in
other nations and import them to South Africa, a practice called
parallel importing.

(Drug manufacturers often sell their products at
different prices in different nations, with the cost varying by as much
as a factor of 10.)

Not surprisingly, the transnational drug companies were not keen on this
legislation. They fear their profits will be undermined by a gray market
of low-cost AIDS drugs, which can run $10,000 a year. (Average annual
income in South Africa: $2600.) The drugmakers scurried to try to block
the law in South African courts. In the United States, they turned to
the Clinton-Gore administration for help. The White House obliged,
threatening South Africa with sanctions if it does not yield. The drug
industry found a friend in Gore, who, as chairman of the United
States/South Africa Binational Commission, has leaned on the South
Africans to repeal the medicines law.

The administration has been quite
forceful in this campaign. On April 30, the U.S. Trade Representative
placed South Africa on its “watch list” for unfair trade practices,
citing Pretoria for its attempt to abrogate patent rights. One of the
charges in the USTR’s report was that South African “representatives
have led a faction of nations in the World Health Organization (WHO) in
calling for a reduction in the level of protection provided for
pharmaceuticals.”

Since when, in the face of a global public health crisis, is speaking
out at international organizations for affordable drugs an unfair trade
practice? It’s telling that the administration has not sought to pursue
its complaint before the World Trade Organization, where a trade gripe
of this sort ought to be registered. Presumably, this is because the
administration’s case is not strong enough to win a favorable WTO
ruling. Instead, the Clinton-Gore gang has chosen to exert political
pressure. It’s possible that the drug manufacturers have a legal
argument, and not just greed, on their side. But if that were the case,
Gore should let the appropriate international tribunals resolve the
matter rather than act as an enforcer for the industry.

On April 8, consumer advocate Ralph Nader and James Love, who runs the
Nader-founded Consumer Project on Technology, wrote to Gore, accusing
him of having “engaged in an astonishing array of bullying tactics to
prevent South Africa from implementing policies, legal under the rules
of the WTO, that are designed to expand access to HIV/AIDS drugs.” The
two noted that several European nations maintain extensive trade in
parallel imports of pharmaceutical drugs and that the United States
itself has issued compulsory licenses on pharmaceutical products. “It is
gross hypocrisy,” they said, “to act as if South Africa is an outlaw in
the world community because it is considering the use of compulsory
licensing for essential medicines... Africa is confronted with a public
health crisis of historical proportions. Of course South Africa should
use compulsory licensing to expand access to essential medicines... Why
should President Nelson Mandela, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Dr.
Nkosazana Zuma [the Health Minister] permit their population to be
defenseless simply because Glaxo Wellcome and Bristol-Myers Squibb want
the power to set prices for US taxpayer funded and government developed
HIV/AIDS drugs in Africa?” The United States, they added, “is literally
asking South Africa to abandon the lives of millions of infected
citizens in order to receive reductions in US barriers to trade or
economic aid.” They called for the administration to consult with public
health groups regarding this controversy.

Gore, as of last week, hadn’t written back. He may have been too busy
hungering for goodness.

You’ll Never Eat Dinner In This Town Again

In the most recent issue of George—the one with the obligatory Star Wars
tie-in cover shot of Liam Neeson—Ann Coulter contributed a column as
thin as her frame that daringly takes on that pressing issue of dating
in Washington. The right-wing commentator and the author of a book
arguing for Bill Clinton’s impeachment reaches the stunning conclusion
that men in Washington are not as adept at asking out women as their
fellow XYers in New York. The piece was a meager swing at that hackneyed
column topic: Washington-vs.-New York.

It’s not worth engaging Coulter
on her basic premise, but it’s clear she knows nothing about the
nation’s capital when she observes—for no apparent reason—that
Washington restaurants “close at 8 P.M. A few really, late-night places
stay open until 9 or 10, but even these sometimes close unexpectedly at
8... [E]veryone is home watching TV all the time.” That’s about as wrong
an observation as a sentient person can make. Trust me, Washington does
not shut down by the time Crossfire ends. Its restaurants remain open
far into the night, some serving beyond Larry King Live and up until
Nightline. Has Coulter never visited the neighborhoods of Adams-Morgan
or DuPont Circle once the sun has slipped from the sky? Certainly, John
Kennedy and other staff members of the magazine have dined in
Washington. So why didn’t they catch this flagrant error?

The closing time for DC restaurants is not an important matter (except
for gourmands who reside in Washington), but Coulter’s cavalier
dissemination of this misinformation does provoke wonder about how she
handles other facts in her book and columns. In any event, Coulter does
need to get out more. With or without a
date.

JWR contributor David Corn, Washington Editor of The
Nation, writes the "Loyal Opposition" column for The New York Press.